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EnergySense Weekly Oil and Gas Follies – Volume 20, November 18, 2013

In which we drill down into the @GDBlackmon Twitter feed to briefly chronicle the week’s silliness, foibles, fake news and real news related to the oil and natural gas industry.

Oil Patch Photo of the Week, Courtesy of Jessica Sena at @MTPetroleum:

Cattle cohabit quite nicely with a wellsite in Montana.

Cool:Half of all US Drilling Rigs to Run on Natural Gas by 2018 - Industry executives and analysts foresee a dramatic move away from diesel for drilling operations that could lead to at least half all of US rigs being powered by natural gas in the next five years. Platts North American natural gas editors, Eunice Bridges and Leticia Vasquez, discuss the numerous reasons behind this massive shift, with cheap gas supplies and environmental factors being two major driving forces.

The Sierra Club and anti-Fracking Activists hate this good news: Coal Dependent States Get Second Chance With Shale Gas Boom - Indeed, there’s an economic transition in this country — one that is seeing coal’s market share fall from roughly half of the electricity market to about 40 percent and one that has seen natural gas’ share rise from about 20 percent to 30 percent of that same energy portfolio, all since around 2007. IHS, a global market and economic information company, says that, nationally, shale gas will provide both good jobs and cheap energy. It says that by 2025, there will be 3.9 million positions directly and indirectly tied to the shale gas and shale oil industries. Such unconventional oil and gas activity, it adds, will increase the disposable income of the average U.S. household. That’s because monthly energy bills as well as other useful services will be cheaper and that savings — estimated to be $1,200 per home in 2012 — will continue to get passed on to consumers.

Thank you, Shale and Fracking:Maryland Power Plant Emissions Decline, But Not For The Reasons You Might Think - Only Massachusetts, Virginia, Oregon, Washington state and the District of Columbia saw greater declines, according to the data released last month, with greenhouse gas emissions falling by more than 10 percent nationwide. Experts attribute the unusually large drop in Maryland to the fact that the state’s plants simply generated less electricity, with energy produced by those plants falling by nearly 32 percent over the same period, according to the Energy Information Administration, a government data collection service. The reason for that drop is simple: Maryland’s largely coal-powered plants couldn’t compete with cheaper natural gas plants in neighboring states.

You say you want a revolution, well you know, we all wanna change the world:Shale Revolution Spreads With Record Wells Outside The US - A record 400 shale wells may be drilled beyond U.S. borders in 2014, with most in China and Russia, according to energy consultants Wood Mackenzie Ltd. While that’s a fraction of the thousands of shale wells drilled in the U.S., the number of rigs used onshore in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region has increased 10 percent over the past year, data compiled by oil services company Baker Hughes Inc. show. Most of those rigs are meant for shale, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Nov. 18 issue. “It’s likely there will be a revolution,” Maria van der Hoeven, executive director at the Paris-based International Energy Agency, said in an interview in London. “But not everywhere at the same time. And you just can’t copy the U.S. experience.”

Great stuff, from Dan Yergin:Congratulations, America, You’re (Almost) Energy independent - or four decades, whenever the American political debate turned to energy, the discussion was all about shortage and scarcity, a reality that haunted the United States ever since the global oil crises of the 1970s. That conversation is over. And now the unconventional energy revolution—newly accessible supplies of shale gas and oil—is creating a new discourse on energy that is changing politics and policies. All of this represents what Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz calls a “new mentality” about America’s energy position, with a new political language to match.

This man is a raving lunatic. He is also a noted leader in the anti-Fracking movement. Coincidence?:Alec Baldwin (now suspended from MSNBC) Changes His Story - Hours after having his wrist slapped with a two week suspension of his low-rated MSNBC show, MSNBC's Alec Baldwin took to the Huffington Post to try and clean up the mess he made after being caught on video Thursday calling a photographer a "********ing f**." Baldwin admits that "whether his show will come back at all is at issue right now," but does himself no favors in that regard by bizarrely changing his story.

Taking a baby step away from an insane energy policy:EPA Proposes Cut to Ethanol Mandate - The Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal Friday to cut the amount of ethanol required to be blended into the nation's gasoline supply, the first such reduction since the renewable fuel standards were set in 2007. A law passed by Congress in 2007 had called for the inclusion of 18.15 billion gallons of renewable fuel in 2014, but on Friday, the EPA proposed that this level be reduced to between 15.00 and 15.52 billion. The standard had previously been increasing every year, with the 2013 requirement set at 16.55 billion gallons.

…and speaking of energy insanity…: New Hampshire Turns to Burning Trees for Electricity - For the first time, the state’s Office of Energy and Planning is posting the cost of wood pellets to compare to the other main heating sources. That outreach combined with a supportive regulatory structure have put wood back on the front burner as an environmentally attractive, inexpensive and local alternative to oil, gas and electricity. In New Hampshire, about 33,500 homes, 6.5 percent, heat with wood, compared with about 2.1 percent of U.S. homes, according to U.S. Census figures. Most New Hampshire homes, about 50 percent, use oil.